Super-religious

Greetings good citizen,

Markets around the globe are bleeding from the eye-sockets again but the markets haven’t told us anything ‘useful’ for a long time…at least since the global banking system went tits up.

It’s early yet but the corporate owned media has nothing to offer as far as a reason why investors are feeling, er, panicky.

Sometimes even the so-called good news is just candy-coated bullshit in disguise.

Er, today’s offering is a question of perspective

One way to look at it is from a ‘covering the bases’ aspect and the other starts to get a little twisted considering how tens of thousands of years of ‘common ground’ has worked out.

First: there's nothing like it if you want to bond a bunch of very diverse people into a tight community of shared meaning and value. A religious congregation brings together people of all ages, backgrounds, educational levels, professional rank, and life circumstances, and melds them into an enduring tribe that's centered around a shared commitment to mutual trust and care, and (most importantly) has a clear and vivid shared vision of the future they're trying to create.

There is simply no other organizational form that encourages people to share their time, energy, and resources so quickly, completely, or enduringly; or aligns so much conviction toward the same goal. (This is why the leaders of corporations, the marketers of sports teams, and the military all study religious cultures, and try to appropriate their tribe-building techniques for their own purposes.) The resulting tribes can last for many centuries -- and acquire a resounding moral voice that can reverberate throughout their larger communities, and well beyond. If you want to change the world, this is the kind of group -- deeply bound by faith, trust, love, history, and a commitment to each other and to the world they envision that transcends life and death -- that's most likely to get it done. Religion is the best way going to get people to consecrate themselves, body and soul, to a larger cause; and to take on the kind of all-or-nothing risks that are often required to really change the world.

Second, religious narratives center people in the long arc of history, telling them where they came from, who they are, what they are capable of, and what kind of future is possible. History does this, too; but religion does it at a deeper, mythic level that gives these stories extra emotional and cognitive resonance. For most of human history, in fact, the task of imagining a different future and giving people the inspiration and courage to reach for it has been the primary role of religious prophets. (So has the job of warning the people that they're wandering into grave error or betraying their own values, and must change their ways or face disaster.) Religion is the native home of the prophetic voice -- the voice that calls people to transformative change. Throughout America's history, our most evocative political prophets -- both Roosevelts, all the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Van Jones, Barack Obama -- have invariably been people who spent a lot of time in the pews, learning to speak the kind of language that calls us to a better place.

Third, over the course of American history, liberal religious faiths have been the primary promoter of progressive values throughout the culture -- and also the leading institution when it came time to inculcate our progressive sensibilities into the next generation. Many, if not most, progressives in America are progressive specifically because they believe that this is what their faith demands of them. They're raising their kids in churches and temples because they believe, as the Bible says, that "if you train up a child in the way that he should go, when he is old, he will not depart from it."

Ironically, people these days are ‘either/or’. They are either ‘super-religious’ or they’re not…and the ‘not’ side of the fence runs the gamut between the ‘keeping up appearances’ crowd to those like me who have no truck with ‘spirit in the sky’ whatsoever.

Now, is religion the ‘easiest’ way to establish ‘common ground’ with, er, ‘like-minded individuals’?

Sadly I would opine no. People tend to ‘compartmentalize’ their faith and their ideology.

The >One Percent make a big display of being ‘devout’ while literally stepping on the needy they occasionally encounter.

Then there are the Super Religious…no irony should be lost on the fact that most conservatives fall into the Super Religious category…there is another name that better describes this phenomenon.

In the Bible they are referred to as ‘zealots’.

The ‘good thing’ about a zealot is they are either ‘on board’ or they’re against you, 100%.

There’s no ‘middle ground’ when it comes to zealotry.

Okay, let’s concede for a moment the idea that religion, like politics, both have their ‘lunatic fringe’.

What about your average, er, ‘keeping up appearances’ type?

This is probably better described as your ‘goes along to get along’ kind of fellow and he’s the primary reason we’re in the pickle we’re in today.

He doesn’t THINK. It literally makes his head hurt so he avoids anything that challenges his primary belief system.

If (those who speak for) Spirit in the sky said ‘Only those who wear pink underwear on Wednesday will find the kingdom of Heaven’ you can bet, no matter how he feels about it personally, jughead will be wearing pink skivvies come Wednesday.

This leaves us the ‘vast majority’…the people who only attend church on major ‘Holy Days’, weddings, christenings and funerals.

Here’s your ‘sweet spot’, the people who think for themselves are the same ones who understand that the church is often responsible for dividing people rather than uniting them.

Yeah, probably a ‘by-product’ of the God’s Will thing those damn zealots keep insisting they know all about.

It’s ‘God’s Will’ that you’re poor, it is also God’s Will that they (think) they are not. This is a ‘judgement call and you can’t question them on it because they can just tell!

But I digress.

Next time you’re in church (wedding, Christening, Funeral, Christmas) take a good look around the place and ask yourself if these are the people you want fighting shoulder to shoulder with you against tyranny?

Chances are you have a circle of friends who are more ‘like-minded’ that you’d be far better off teaming up with.

And in fairness, the article says nothing about who you’d want on your side to go to war with…but that’s what’s implied.

That you’d be better off teaming up with the church, a dubious idea at best…and we need look no further than the damn conservo-whackos to see how that idea is going to play itself out.

But you know journalism, throw a bunch of shit up against the wall and see what sticks!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Inside the paper cup...

Greetings good citizen,

Here we are again, back inside the ‘paper cup’ the corporate media reports from. Which is to say the ‘fantasy world’ where all is well and conservatives have all of the answers.

(Didn’t we conclude yesterday that there is no ‘conservative bias’ in the media? At least according to the decidedly conservative Corporate media.)

Yesterday we also reached the conclusion that the ‘new and improved, fair and balanced’ media was considerably less reliable and trustworthy than the accursed ‘Liberal Media’.

It’s just a ‘cowinkidink’ that the new, can’t believe a word they say media popped into existence immediately after a highly illegal ‘consolidation’ of national media markets.

But the criminal acts of lawyers aren’t illegal if the perps pay off the right officials.

Which brings us full circle to the ‘crux’ of the whole situation. Most of you believe we have money problems when what we really have are legal problems!

It is NOT POSSIBLE to solve our financial crisis as long as our legal system remains inoperative/non-responsive.

We are faced with, as everyone is slowly realizing, the biggest ‘heist’ ever and the so-called ‘cops’ are directing traffic while the criminals load the truck! (Literally facilitating their get away!)

AND THERE AIN’T A FUCKING THING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT!

(I know writing it in all caps is childish but it satisfies my inner child to do it…so there.)

The self-interested are bankrupting the nation by off-shoring all of our manufacturing capacity and throwing wide the doors of trade so they can import (duty-free) what used to be made right here!

As our economic desert grows, those who profited mightily from lower labor costs and less per employee benefit costs (no pensions and no healthcare) are in the process of joining their overseas empires, leaving a badly wounded land behind.

Their ‘new’ employees are also their new customers, so it’s the big ‘fuck you’ to the rest of us.

Truth be told good citizen, this is, unquestionably, ‘treason’ and everyone responsible SHOULD hang (starting with the criminal lawyers who looked the other way for a payday.)

I mean, what price can you put on the destruction of an entire civilization?

It’s not just the US that got ‘stuck’, it is every ‘developed’ nation around the world.

And guess who pulled the strings for all of this to work?

That’s right…THE FUCKING BANKERS!

Who are, coincidentally, the ‘arbiters of the value of everything’ (because they say so, no less!)

This is why ‘money’ failed! (Because in the end it is all just somebody’s [totally uninformed] ‘opinion’.)

It is so because they say it is so.

Unfortunately there is no escaping this, which is why A Simple Plan removes this process from the ‘self-interested’ (By making income streams illegal…actually they will be ‘impossible’, the law will be ‘self-enforcing’.)

[Wonkish: for Newbies, if the mention of the word ‘economics’ makes your eyes glaze over, ‘income streams’ are why the rich remain rich while most lottery winners go bankrupt.

Simply put, an income stream is an income source derived from the sale of a product.

Society/civilization DOES NOT NEED ‘income streams’ to function, we do what we do because it needs doing (and you would do it regardless of whether or not you got paid for it.)

Money is a wonderful invention because it eliminates the need for you to do EVERYTHING yourself. This is a ‘good thing’.

Letting ‘someone else’ decide how much your money is worth is a ‘bad thing’. They tend to decide in their own favor. (Usually by demanding that you pay more than whatever they have to offer is worth. It’s a familiar concept, paying $2 for a one dollar item…because if you don’t pay the two bucks you don’t get the sumbitch.)

How ‘out of hand’ is this situation…the world now supports more than 1,500 multi-billionaires AND EVERY FUCKING ONE OF THEM overcharges their customers! (Which is how they got to be Billionaires!)

Understand, Mother Nature DOESN’T HAVE A CASH REGISTER so all, er, ‘inputs’ are, yup, ‘FREE’. The fucking boss doesn’t pay a red cent for inputs so why should you?

He’s taking X and turning it into something useful…which is inaccurate, he does NONE of this (personally) and the term ‘rich employee’ is an oxymoron. No matter how big your paycheck, without your own income stream, YOU ARE A PEASANT!

All of which is neither here nor there.

What you need to ‘unlearn’ is just ‘who(m) has a ‘right’ to what, when.

Libertarians are fond of spelling your rights out for you because, for them, it is simple, beyond ownership, you have NONE!

This is idiotic but a lot of things humans take for granted don’t withstand close scrutiny well at all.

While ‘income streams’ ARE the ‘lifeblood’ of capitalism they are otherwise unnecessary.

They exist solely to provide an income source for the, er, ‘owner’ (who is incapable of providing any proof at all that they have a right to what they claim is theirs.)

At the very best, ALL ‘owners’ are guilty of dealing in ‘stolen goods’.

Worse, these people commonly sell you what is already ‘yours’ to begin with!

Since the most ‘expendable’ person at any given company is its ‘owner’, A Simple Plan eliminates that position.

Managers, not owners ‘run’ companies.

Much of the ‘suffering’ endured by the lower echelons of our civilization is due to the ‘mal-distribution’ of economic benefit.

Look at what the few have done to what was once the most powerful nation on the planet.

All due to patently false claims of ‘ownership’, somehow the imbeciles think the backing of the ‘legal system’ justifies their claims…which is laughable. I can appoint some idiot to be a judge and he'll gladly agree to whatever I tell him! (Which brings us back to our deeply flawed legal system.)

As you can see, the problem is much deeper than it first appears.

While this could all be summed up by pointing to the central issue, that of ‘ownership’ is it shared or are some pigs ‘more equal’ than others?

A Simple Plan takes the position that we ‘share’ the ownership of this planet’s resources, which includes the planet itself.

We are, by extension, the ‘stewards’ of the interests of future generations. (Another job the current managers are failing miserably at.)

Sadly, ‘damage control’ is the most we can hope for.

Fortunately, the ‘scorched earth’ doesn’t encompass the whole planet (yet.)

Anyway, let me assure you that there are no ‘simple’ answers. It all comes down to what ‘philosophy’ (or ideology) you subscribe to.

Income streams are ‘predatory. They only serve the interests of the owner at the expense of society.

This is NOT what any of us signed up for when we agreed not to kill one another on sight.

Don’t make us change our minds…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

'Liberal Bias'

Greetings good citizen,

We all know (because the media has told us, repeatedly) that there is a definite ‘liberal bias’ in the mainstream media.

Um, suspiciously, few seem to find this, er, ‘allegation’ to be itself ‘biased’. More interesting is the fact that since this claim was originally made today’s media has a decidedly (and easily detectable) conservative slant…and nobody is bitching about that…

Which should tell you something.

Something about the ‘4th Estate’ being co-opted (as I recently pointed out.)

Yes good citizen, since ‘the war against liberal bias in the media’ went public, the consensus is that the ‘conservative media is ‘unreliable’ at best and ‘untrustworthy’ most of the time…but at least they got rid of the damn liberal bias!

But today’s story is even more interesting (and sure to evoke more howling from conservatives about the biased ‘liberal media’. Today’s story is one of how conservative legislators are seeking the direct input of this nation’s oligarchs regarding what legislation (they think) needs fixing?

You can rest assured that you won’t see these Republicans leading the charge to formulate solutions for these issues!

This is what the ‘ballot box' produces when you combine it with ‘Private Enterprise’ that also owns the ‘free press’.

I don’t think any of you needs to be educated to the fact that the ownership of an object and its freedom (or calling it ‘free’) is a ‘contradiction of terms’ commonly referred to as an ‘oxymoron’.

Under wretched Capitalism, the ‘owner’ of a media outlet gets to dictate that outlet’s, er, ‘position’ on any given topic…this ‘freedom’ stops with the will and pleasure of the owner, the rest of us can go suck rocks if we don’t like it/agree with what the media reports.

Worse, it doesn’t have to be the ‘truth’ (because said owner is ‘free’ to express their ‘opinion’, even if they are election results.)

How else do you think elections get ‘stolen’?


Think this isn’t a problem, even Thomas Jefferson fretted about the ‘over-reliance’ our system of government has on MEN ‘both good and true’…

What do you suppose has been done since the 1790’s to diminish these concerns of the Founders?

That’s right, NOTHING!

Worse, good citizen, is the alternative. Once such a system becomes corrupted, the only way to (positively) repair it is to (completely) eliminate it.

There is no ‘middle ground’.

Anyone who insists otherwise is trying to deceive you.

No irony should be lost on the fact that this brings us full circle to the one contentious object that IS the root of all of our problems.

This is actually quite humorous when viewed from the ‘all money is funny’ perspective.

The thing you need to wrap your head around is THE ONLY WAY OUT is through the ‘funny money’ door!

I suppose, once again, it would be wise to repeat that it is not my intention to tell you what to think (that is what the Republican Party exists for) but to give you something to think about, sometimes by pointing out what you aren’t seeing.

You were RAISED to BELIEVE that MONEY was GODSENT, that GOD invented money and for that reason alone, MONEY was SACRED!

Bad news good citizen…your self-professed ‘betters’ lied to you.

It is positively astounding how many people believe that money has its roots in God…not that the fuckers who print the junk didn’t do everything in their power to foster that belief…

This is absolutely hilarious to an Atheist; two ‘make believe’ concepts in one and both of them are ‘man-made’! It is just too rich!

Step one is realizing the ‘faith based’ nature of that failed attempt to simplify barter.

It staggers the mind to consider how much we endure due to this treacherous mind game the players inflict upon the rest of us.

What is truly mind-boggling is what will happen when/if people realize they have been ‘played’?

We’ve all experienced the anger others display when they learn that they have been ‘cheated’.

This is the ‘landmine’ the financial sector is currently tap-dancing upon.

Worse, good citizen, the ‘decision’ to NOT meet longstanding social obligations (by so-called conservatives) is a conscious one.

The ‘mis-managers’ of our society DO NOT KNOW what they are doing because they are COMPLETELY IGNORANT regarding the ‘true nature’ of, er, money, which has but one useful purpose to society.

They do understand one thing though…they KNOW they are cheating everybody else…and this knowledge scares them spitless because they KNOW what they would do if the shoes were reversed.

No irony should be lost on the new perspective this revelation gives to concepts like ‘the rapture’…God save them indeed! (It will be the ONLY way they escape ‘death most horrible’.)

Which probably explains why the ‘desecration of a corpse’ is a crime…because the dead don’t care. What happens to the ‘meat-suit’ after you’re gone is of little consequence.

But I digress, this is morbid beyond the usual grim fare normally served.

Sadly, if you don’t have the stomach for it, you’re definitely not going to like the not too distant future.

THAT will redefine the term ‘grim’.

But enough is enough,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

With apologies but no excuses, the future is what it is,

Gegner

Liberty deficit?

Greetings good citizen,

Just finished my last minute preparations for the oncoming storm…and there are more than a few things I’m just gonna have to live with.

But enough about me, it’s all about YOU (and the sooner everybody else catches on, the smoother these things will go!)

I trust YOU had a splendid Christmas (for those of you who celebrate such things. Ironically, if you’re a capitalist, Christmas is sort of forced upon you whether you want it or not since the majority of the capitalist world is Christian. [There’s something inherently contradictory about calling the communist Chinese ‘capitalists’ although their leaders seem to wear the label comfortably!])

How much irony is there in the fact that the ‘free world’ is undergoing a decidedly ‘radical transformation’ in the opposite direction?

Thus says this article from Alternet regarding Obama’s Liberty Problem

Constant reader already knows about my belief that the ‘ballot box of freedom’ is useless once it becomes obvious that no matter who ‘wins’ election they take their marching orders from the same inbred clique…

How else do we reconcile the stunning ‘sameness’ of two supposedly polar opposite political parties? One that made no bones about openly declaring the ‘super rich’ as his constituency while the other promised ‘change you could believe in’ and yet he has changed nothing!

The part one marvels at is how both, um, leaders have molded themselves perfectly into the profile of ‘candidate for assassination’ but neither one has had so much as a single failed attempt on their lives!

Is this super efficient security or the realization that there is a whole closet full of puppets standing ready to take either of these clown’s places?

So why bother?

Not for nothing good citizen, what we have here is a perfect illustration of just how ‘precarious’ our position is.

The individuals cease to matter, in deference to the current president, he may not go along with ANY of the bewildering crimes that are being attributed to him, but he’s in NO POSITION to stop what is happening.

HE does not control the media, those who OWN the media control what we all see and hear…and by extension, what we believe.

I am of the rabid belief that there are certain things that NOBODY should ‘own’ and the media is one of them.

There is nothing more crippling to a society than a ‘for profit’ media because the ‘truth’ becomes secondary to solvency.

What good is a ‘watchdog’ that fails to bark because the thief is holding a bowl of food?

This is the sort of thing the rabid capitalist calls ‘nitpicking’ (until his freedom is endangered, then it’s a ‘liberal scandal!’)

Leaving us with what has become an increasingly interesting question, who the fuck are you gonna vote for come 2012?

The Republicans caused this mess and the Demo-rats have twiddled their thumbs idly as the criminals have laughed all the way to the bank!

What about ‘justice’?

It is rapidly becoming apparent that ‘justice’, like freedom and liberty have become just another word, a ‘relative’ term at best.

How does one demand justice when no crime has been committed?

Short answer, you don’t.

Which leaves you where, exactly?

Your guess is as good as mine and I ain’t going there…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Just say No!

Greetings good citizen,

Today is one of the heaviest ‘travel days’ of the year as people cover what can be great distances so they may reunite with their kin.

Somewhat ‘in tandem’ with this annual event is the TSA’s ‘stepping up’ of ‘security measures’ in the ‘war without end’ against terror.

Oddly, nobody has stepped forward to lead others in exercising the ‘obvious’ retaliatory measure…boycott.

If they are going to strip search or force you to walk through a device that renders you virtually naked, ‘just say no’…meaning DON’T BUY AN AIRLINE TICKET!

Make the planes SIT ON THE FUCKING GROUND! FUCK ‘EM!

At ‘what price’ safety good citizen? I would posit right here and now that the price we’re being, er, ‘asked’ to pay is too fucking much. If you want to live with/like ‘Chicken little’ knock yourself out. The thing you need to be aware of is the ‘cost’ of this intrusive herding; this gross violation of the ‘presumption of innocence’ costs you your humanity as well as your dignity!

For the moment you can take the train or the bus without suffering the ‘indignity’ of being treated like a steer in a chute or, more factually, a ‘potential terrorist’.

Although I did see today that ‘our legislators’ have already proposed putting both of these ‘safety measures’ in place at ALL REMAINING transport terminals. Hell, the article went on to point out that these ‘defacto’ strip search machines are already turning up in the nation’s courthouses…but those weasels have a right to be paranoid, they are well aware of the crimes they have committed!

Please allow me to direct your attention to the fact that THIS KIND of intrusive legislative action will sail through the supposedly deeply divided houses of Congress, the same way funding for ‘war without end does’ while any proposed extension of unemployment benefits is blocked by ‘partisan politics’…

How STUPID are you good citizen? You’d have to be pretty fucking dumb not to recognize what’s going on both in your name and right under your nose!

Just to give this particular drum another well deserved pounding, why is it that the LYING, CORPORATE OWNED MEDIA HASN’T BEEN BURNT TO THE GROUND?

Are reporters ‘blind’ or (and more likely) they are too fearful of ‘biting the hand that feeds them.’

Not that this admission does the rest of us any good.

So no, nobody would be more surprised than me to learn of even one media outlet ANYWHERE, being deliberately destroyed by angry consumers.

Ain’t going to happen and when it does, it will be attributed to ‘collateral damage’, the station burned down because the whole block burned down with it.

Which is to point out that the lying media wouldn’t admit to its own destruction unless it was impossible to deny.

Naturally, it is ‘inadvisable’ to stick around after committing an act of wanton destruction of private property no matter how ‘righteous’ the act was.

Sort of brings us full circle to that ‘bought and paid for’ government thing and how their ‘toadies’ ‘do as they’re told’ as opposed to doing what’s right.

There is a ‘flip side’ to this sudden, heavy handed ‘deterrent’ to travelling freely and that is the ‘Peak Energy’ issue.

In the not too distant future, only the very wealthy (who also happen to enjoy a certain ‘immunity’ from the tactics so freely employed against ‘lowlifes’ like you) will be able to afford to travel.

And AGAIN, the important distinction will be ‘how’ you derive your income…if you get a paycheck, you’re a ‘peasant’ but if you ‘own an income stream’, you’re one of the privileged few…

Um, Forgive me good citizen by ‘subtlety’ is not my strong suit…

Nor is what’s happening here particularly subtle by any stretch of the imagination.

Continue to believe in ‘THE BIG LIE’ at your own peril.

Naturally the question returns to ‘which big lie are you talking about?’

That should be the first ‘red flag’ good citizen. When there is so much (obvious) falsehood being transmitted by ‘official sources’ that one is uncertain which lie is the subject of the moment.

Well, let’s cut to the chase and go to the most persistent lie we’ve been told over the past forty years…that ‘everything is going to work out fine.’

There is no ‘happy ending’ waiting for you once you hit retirement age or any other age for that matter. Even a lottery jackpot contains your certain doom within it!

If you don’t use your fellow humans as an ‘income stream’, your goose is cooked!

A one time, huge pile of cash will do absolutely nothing for you good citizen because our entire economic system is based on faulty premises supported by ‘short-term thinking’.

Politicians regularly ‘gild the lily’; pretending things are more equitable than they are in reality, which is why I pull no punches with my proposal. It is what it says it is, it is both brutal AND fair.

We’d all love to believe that we could all get along with everybody else and be content with our share of what there is…but, there isn’t enough of ‘the best’ for all of us to enjoy.

So, who gets the dregs is the eternal contest of the moment…

We should not be put off by this distinction; even competition for ‘the dregs’ is fierce!

It’s that ‘serve in Heaven’ or ‘rule in Hell’ thing again…

Bizarrely, there is no shortage of people willing to do whatever it takes to make themselves ‘kings of the shit-heap!’

Yet again we encounter that dubious distinction between ‘famous’ and ‘infamous’…

Which is to point out that there isn’t a nickel’s worth of difference between a ‘serious person’ and a ‘seriously defective person(ality.’)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

It is time once again to remind you that I am not here to tell you what to think, I am here to provide you with something to think about!

Gegner

Pauperized!

Greetings good citizen,

We can only wonder how (the irrelevant) stock markets decided to reverse yesterday’s losses during this morning trading, the mysterious uptick hasn’t been attributed to anything (Not that this particularly matters; movements of the markets seldom make sense.)

Nor is the ‘trading day’ over, markets may well end where they started and we’d be none the wiser.

Who cares about the corporate sponsored Kabuki Dance put on for your benefit by the MSM?

Makes you wonder what the ‘real news’ would look like, doesn’t it?

Well, tonight’s first offering is a refutation of ‘the dance’ itself, not that you, Dear reader/Good Citizen is in need of such enlightenment…

No. 330: September Production and Housing Starts: Subscription required: October 19th, 2010

• Third-Quarter Production Growth Slowed and Housing Contracted
• Third-Quarter GDP Should Have Slowed, But the Heavily-Politicized and Guesstimated Series Is Virtually Worthless...

How’s that for ‘short and to the point’?

We are left to ponder if misery can exist in the absence of official recognition?

Would Marie Antoinette have kept her head if she had today’s media to put a positive spin on an otherwise retched economy?

How retched is it?

5 Pieces of Advice for the New Paupers

Tonight’s second offering is but the most fleeting of glimpses of today’s economic reality. What the writer shares here fails to hammer home what the actual experience is really like.

I have often railed about how much we take things for granted. When we walk over to a light switch, we expect something to happen when we toggle it.

When nothing happens, we are genuinely perplexed! The light switch is a relatively recent invention yet they have become so ingrained into our existence that we expect them to function whenever we encounter one (within reason.)

Naturally, the light switch doesn’t function if there isn’t one to flip, a situation many of the homeless find themselves confronted with. Then there’s the ‘running water’ situation, which also has multiple aspects to it.

You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone.

Worse is the realization that your ‘privation’ (being deprived of these, er, ‘basic necessities’) was caused by some greed head’s decision to ship your job to a third world cesspool! (This assumes you had a marketable skill at some point in the past, many recent grads don’t even have that…which is a whole other can of worms!)

Yes good citizen, it all comes down to choices AND YOU HAVEN’T BEEN GIVEN ANY THAT MATTER!

Knowing what you know today, would you have voted Republican EVEN ONCE over the past forty years?

Many of you are too young to remember (and conservatives conveniently ‘forget’) that the first time anybody EVER heard the acronym NAFTA, it was being touted by none other than ‘The Great Communicator’ (of ‘Bedtime for Bonzo’ fame!)

Don’t know who that is? Probably better forgotten anyway.

No amount of Monday morning quarterbacking can alter the past, but it is even more disturbing to acknowledge that it is already too late to alter the political landscape (via the political machinery provided) too.

You won’t get to ‘vote’ for who will run things or what laws you will forced to live under; history has shown we are used to being the victims of tyranny.

MAYBE future historians will ask how, in such an interconnected society, we let it all slip away? Why didn’t we use the resources available to us to unite against this obvious threat?

Like any of us had a choice!

Our ‘problem’ in a nutshell is the same one we’ve always faced, Treason.

It is far too easy to ‘buy off’ those elected to defend the public from the criminals among us.

Worse, the criminals have an astounding number of, er, ‘defenders’.
It is not until the criminals start to prey upon the people who ‘thought’ they enjoyed the criminal’s protection that the cries for justice are heard.

Yes, once upon a time politicians would run on ‘Law & Order’ issues, now that there is going to be a huge uptick in, er, ‘criminal activity’ they’ll be at it again.

Unfortunately you will NOT be given the option of prosecuting the criminals responsible for the increase in ‘social unrest’.

And that’s beyond being a damn shame.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Structural Baloney

Greetings good citizen,

Every once in a while you come across something that confirms you aren’t the only one whose thoughts travel along a certain pathway.

A Simple Plan would solve the unemployment ‘crisis’ tomorrow and in a stunning admission, Paul Krugman AGREES

That ‘miracle’ aside, he also admits the major obstacle to correcting the unemployment situation is the, er, ‘political will’ to do so.

You see, the capitalists wouldn’t have any problem with cutting the workweek in half nor would it be any skin off of their nose if the workforce doubled as a result.

What would frost the capitalist’s cookies is that this is only ‘half’ of the solution…if we are to cut people’s pay in half we must also reduce how much they are required to lay out by a proportionate amount.

The first half is ‘painless’; it is basically twice the number of workers for the same amount of pay. It is the second half that is going to take some, er, ‘belt tightening’ on the part of the, er, ‘profit compensated’ crowd.

No irony should be lost on the fact that the obvious place to ‘cut’ this expense is already ‘reducing itself’…that is the amount of pay the average worker has to shell out for shelter.

Under A Simple Plan, shelter is a ‘gimme’, you NEVER pay for it…conversely, you can never buy nor sell it either. Which is cool because you don’t need to save for ‘retirement’. That’s a ‘gimme’ to. (Bizarrely, retirement was one of the principle arguments for ‘home ownership’, your ‘ever appreciating’ home WAS your retirement account!)

My how some things change!

Anyway, how did our Nobel Laureate do?

All the facts suggest that high unemployment in America is the result of inadequate demand — full stop.

Saying that there are no easy answers sounds wise, but it’s actually foolish: our unemployment crisis could be cured very quickly if we had the intellectual clarity and political will to act. [The ‘pittance’ this would ‘cost’ in dollars is but a fraction of what doing nothing will cost in blood!]

In other words, structural unemployment is a fake problem, which mainly serves as an excuse for not pursuing real solutions.

[Were we to ‘address’ our unemployment problem, we would end up ‘shifting’ that problem to ‘exporting nations’, something we must do anyway before the ‘export model’ collapses! (Due to ‘peak energy’.)]

Who are these wise heads I’m talking about? The most widely quoted figure is Narayana Kocherlakota, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, who has attracted a lot of attention by insisting that dealing with high unemployment isn’t a Fed responsibility: “Firms have jobs, but can’t find appropriate workers. The workers want to work, but can’t find appropriate jobs,” he asserts, concluding that “It is hard to see how the Fed can do much to cure this problem.” [It’s an obvious ‘lie’ to claim that we are suffering from a ‘skills mis-match’ when many of the most qualified workers are actually suffering from ‘over fifty disease!’]

Now, the Minneapolis Fed is known for its conservative outlook, and claims that unemployment is mainly structural do tend to come from the right of the political spectrum. But some people on the other side of the aisle say similar things. For example, former President Bill Clinton recently told an interviewer that unemployment remained high because “people don’t have the job skills for the jobs that are open.”

[Good ol’ Bill Jefferson! Best Republican president we’ve had since Lincoln! Don’t let that D after his name fool you, like his sidekick ‘Barrack’, Billy boy is a dyed in the wool Republican from the word go.

Need proof? Look at who he ‘hangs out with’…]

Well, I’d respectfully suggest that Mr. Clinton talk to researchers at the Roosevelt Institute and the Economic Policy Institute, both of which have recently released important reports completely debunking claims of a surge in structural unemployment.

After all, what should we be seeing if statements like those of Mr. Kocherlakota or Mr. Clinton were true? The answer is, there should be significant labor shortages somewhere in America — major industries that are trying to expand but are having trouble hiring, major classes of workers who find their skills in great demand, major parts of the country with low unemployment even as the rest of the nation suffers.

None of these things exist. Job openings have plunged in every major sector, while the number of workers forced into part-time employment in almost all industries has soared. Unemployment has surged in every major occupational category. Only three states, with a combined population not much larger than that of Brooklyn, have unemployment rates below 5 percent. [It should come as a mystery to no one that those three States are A.) Red and B.) Specialize in Banking!]

Oh, and where are these firms that “can’t find appropriate workers”? The National Federation of Independent Business has been surveying small businesses for many years, asking them to name their most important problem; the percentage citing problems with labor quality is now at an all-time low, reflecting the reality that these days even highly skilled workers are desperate for employment.

So all the evidence contradicts the claim that we’re mainly suffering from structural unemployment. Why, then, has this claim become so popular? [Like he doesn’t know, working as he does for the ‘willful ignorance’ people!]

Part of the answer is that this is what always happens during periods of high unemployment — in part because pundits and analysts believe that declaring the problem deeply rooted, with no easy answers, makes them sound serious.

I’ve been looking at what self-proclaimed experts were saying about unemployment during the Great Depression; it was almost identical to what Very Serious People are saying now. Unemployment cannot be brought down rapidly, declared one 1935 analysis, because the work force is “unadaptable and untrained. It cannot respond to the opportunities which industry may offer.” A few years later, a large defense buildup finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy’s needs — and suddenly industry was eager to employ those “unadaptable and untrained” workers.

[Funny how a little thing like the prospects of ‘global subjugation’ changed everything, isn’t it?]

But now, as then, powerful forces are ideologically opposed to the whole idea of government action on a sufficient scale to jump-start the economy. And that, fundamentally, is why claims that we face huge structural problems have been proliferating: they offer a reason to do nothing about the mass unemployment that is crippling our economy and our society. [Worse, doing ‘nothing’ is a ‘non-starter’, you can’t leave millions of people out in the cold with no place to turn because they WILL destroy those who abandoned them!]

So what you need to know is that there is no evidence whatsoever to back these claims. We aren’t suffering from a shortage of needed skills; we’re suffering from a lack of policy resolve. As I said, structural unemployment isn’t a real problem, it’s an excuse — a reason not to act on America’s problems at a time when action is desperately needed.

While I find such articles, er, ‘refreshing’, I am also ‘disappointed’ that Mr. Krugman wasn’t more specific about how to solve the crisis.

This is why I repeat that there is ‘No way out’ of this mess under capitalism. It can’t be done…it can be ‘postponed’ by things like Jubilees (debt forgiveness) but this does nothing to correct the underlying problems that brought us here in the first place.

This brings us full circle to the issue of why they don’t ‘forgive’ everybody’s onerous debts tomorrow.

They COULD do it very easily…but there’s a ‘downside’. Just how diligent would you be paying back future debt knowing they were able to ‘walk away’ from what you owed before?

The, er, ‘incentive’ to pay would go right out the window if they let you off the hook free and repossessing most of what you bought on credit is a non-starter!

Nobody is going to want it after you are done with it nor would they be willing to pay half price for used junk!

So even a Jubilee is, er, ‘problematic’…sets a bad ‘precedent’. Worse, how long would it be before people started ‘demanding’ Jubilees?

Now the whole idea of ‘credit’ goes right out the window and we are faced with the daunting prospects of a ‘gift economy.’ This could very rapidly erode the ‘work ethic’ and result in…you guessed it, another highway that leads directly to ‘economic collapse’!

Naturally, the purpose of these little ‘thought experiments’ is to illuminate rather than to confuse.

A.S.P. provides a concrete method for addressing the ‘population factor’ which has become more ominously labeled the ‘surplus population’ by die-hard capitalists.

Just another reason why capitalism should be abandoned as soon as possible!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Greetings good citizen,

Oh wouldn’t it be so much easier for those who run this country that yesterday were banished from our vocabulary?

Not yesterday specifically but the whole idea of ‘the past’.

You know if they could, they would…in a heartbeat.

It is a thought that redefines the term ‘waking nightmare’ and it’s more than a little disturbing it even occurred to me.

I bring this up because more than a couple of my, er, ‘fellow travelers’ (some of them would balk at being called ‘peers’.) Have pointed out the troubling disconnect between the market rising a hundred points while the GDP was slashed by…well, it guess it’s in ‘how’ you go about it. I use the rough number of fifty percent but the sites devoted to trading advice are saying thirty…I know I’m high but they are too low!

Which is to say the MSM, er, pretends that it (and therefore its readers) exist in the ‘perpetual now’.

Understandably, each news item exists as a separate entry; sort of floating in its own reality, what I refer to here is more diabolical. If they could ‘erase’ yesterday then today would be whatever they said it was because there would be no record of it.

And sometimes that’s just what the MSM comes across like…like yesterday didn’t happen.

Or in this case a whole bunch of yesterdays…roughly three years worth.

Which is to ask how you keep your head from exploding when (obviously clueless) pundits alternate between the ‘slow recovery’ meme and the overly optimistic ‘bright horizons’ cheerleading?

Maybe I should ask if three years has been ‘slow enough’ for ya?

How much ‘slower’ could it get?

Do you ‘feel bad’ for the pundits because the economy keeps making a liar out of them? (I don’t. They COULD try a novel idea, how about telling the fucking TRUTH for a change!)

I’ll spare you the ‘tirade’. You’ve heard it often enough already…

Okay, I’ll spare you THAT tirade…you already know I’m going to go off on something!

Hell, it’s my birthday…not that it has anything to do with any of this!

Focus.

The ‘timebomb’ is ticking good citizen. The general public has been on the ‘wrong course’ for so long that ‘patience’ is drawing to an end.

People are sick of waiting for things to ‘turn around’.

Worse, guess who’s in the ‘crosshairs’?

It’s unfair to point the cannon only at the politicians, our corporate overlords have rightly earned their ‘share’ of the spotlight.

Equally as disturbing is how the, er, RWNM has been frantically pointing to the, er, ‘tolerant’ portion of the public as being the ‘cause’ of our wrecked economy. (If you don’t send your tax return in laced with a tablespoonful of Anthrax, you’re a gay marriage supportin’, tree-huggin’ ‘librul’!)

Ironically, where do you suppose we’ll find those tough talking, war supportin’, patriotic Murikan heroes when the shit hits the fan?

Hiding behind the nearest badge…that’s where!

It is truly amazing how the general public has failed to grasp that our current problems have their ‘source’ in the ‘Reagan Revolution’, which was the beginning of the end for America.

Worse, most think our problems are a simple ‘competence issue’…if only we had ‘qualified people’ in charge!

So good citizen, how many of you are up for ‘tap dancing on a land mine?’

If it is to be, it is up to Thee!

The people ARE the Law…something the overreaching need to be reminded of every now and then!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Shameless Propaganda

Greetings good citizen,

There’s a lot of primal screams and finger pointing going on over Glen Beck’s Lincoln Memorial event. It seems a whole 2,500 ‘Tea Partiers’ attended…

With ‘grassroots’ like that it’s no wonder they regularly win elections…

So what are we looking at, really? (Why are they showing us this?)

Even the ‘zombies’ that attended know they’re being painted as ‘mindless morons’.

Propaganda is intended to work on a number of levels.

What does the ‘low turnout’ tell us? That those who made the trip were ‘party operatives’, following orders. (Hell, most of them were probably having their expenses picked up by corporate!)

The level of publicity this ‘faux’ movement enjoys also tells us it is a ‘front’, a ‘distraction’.

While the main focus comes from one of the founders/backers of the…er, ‘movement’, the rest of the MSM obligingly follows along, making us wonder if there isn’t a serious deficiency in the people who decide what is and isn’t ‘newsworthy’.

(Alas! We know that they too are simply ‘following orders’…)

Which leads us to the disturbing issue of when a ‘grassroots movement’ stops being ‘populist’? Would the Tea Partiers even exist without their corporate parent(s)?

From the looks of the much publicized (albeit lightly attended) ‘rally’, I don’t think so.

What can we take away from this?

‘They’ want you to think there is a groundswell of outrage attacking ‘government overreach’.

What do conservatives ‘fear’ most?

Conservatives fear higher taxes and closer scrutiny/more government regulation.

Um, 2,500 people is hardly a ‘groundswell’…

Funny how ‘anti-tax’ California has become the poster child for ‘failed government’.

Which is to say those who were originally outraged over ‘out of control’ government spending sort of got a wake up call when the local firehouse was left unattended every other day.

Bear with me as we shift mental gears here from ‘shameless propaganda’ to ‘economic reality check’

The latest ‘outrage’ to come under assault by conservative forces is the ‘comparatively generous’ benefits paid to public sector employees.

Naturally, this is the Union’s fault.

Employers would keep prices ‘in check’ by keeping wages, er, ‘stable’…

Well, that’s the theory anyway. When the guy down the street starts raking it in ‘hand over fist’ all bets are off!

Wouldn’t do to be left in the dust! What’s the point of being rich if you can’t get richer?

Naturally, ‘somebody’s’ going to have to ‘pay’ for that…

Yeah, they’re looking at you…

But once again I digress…

What should be lost on no one is the thirty years of ‘wage stagnation’ the laboring class/paycheck peasants have suffered.

This is why the comparatively modest gains made by the public sector appear ‘outrageous’.

It is NOT a case of the public sector being ‘overpaid’ as much as the private sector has been severely ‘underpaid’…and who is responsible for that?

The very same people that brought you the “Party of No!”

NO taxes, NO regulations (NO raises and NO job security…worse, thanks to their ‘anti-tax’ bias, there’s NO-body watching your back anymore either!)

But you were down with that, right?

That’s why there were hundreds of thousands of people at the heavily advertised ‘Tea Party’ event…NOT.

But, naturally, this isn’t the half of it when it comes to ‘propaganda’…

How do you feel good citizen when, after spending trillions (that YOU are on the hook for) to ‘bail out’ the banking sector from their own cupidity, the rest of the economy is still a disaster looking for a place to happen.

We just passed the three-year mark of the event that brought the housing market to its knees. Flipper’s default on the mortgages he couldn’t find suckers to rent/take off his hands for double what he paid. This caused all MBS to become ‘suspect’, crashing the market virtually overnight…

This also (amazingly enough) caused a 4 point drop in GDP, bringing to the fore the issue of what, precisely, the GDP tells us. Obviously not what we want to know…

So, after nearly a year and a half of ‘Green Shoots’ and a truly amazing (albeit nonsensical) ‘rally’ in the stock markets, we are once again being told that the rising tide won’t lift all boats…like the last two ‘jobless recoveries.’

If you haven’t been keeping track, this is the third jobless recovery…and you understand that without jobs THERE IS NO RECOVERY!

Why has the ‘stimulus’ done zero good (unless you work for a paving contractor and even then…a few people with money in their pockets does not an economy make.

What’s wrong with this picture good citizen?

You don’t suppose we are getting FUCKED by globalization?

What you need is an accurate picture of what’s going down.

The (flaming) asshole who owns a particular segment of the market for a given product decides to move production to a low wage nation because that is what his competitors are doing.

He fires everyone that worked for him here the second his new facility is up to speed…but he doesn’t drop his prices, not here anyway…people are already used to paying what he was charging. He uses this additional profit to subsidize the penetration of new markets…

Anyway, you no longer have a job, you can still buy the product and what you notice is the price remains the same…it doesn’t go up but it doesn’t go down either.

So you have to take a ‘new’ job…but guess what? The new job doesn’t pay what the old job did so you have to, er, ‘adjust’ your spending accordingly.

Since the Eighties, you’ve been forced to repeat this process several times, losing ground each time.

If you’ve been lucky enough to secure employment (again.)

What you DON’T see is the huge ‘shrinkage’ in overall payrolls (mostly because this ‘slack’ has been taken up by ‘bonuses’ in the financial sector.)

Some of these ‘slackers’ are pulling down 10 digit bonus checks…and we aren’t including ‘cents’ here!

Does anyone still wonder why the economy is sucking pond water?

What should blow all of your minds is two years down-range and the 2009 ‘bonus pool’ was LARGER than the 2007 pool was!

How the HELL did they manage that?

Worse, everybody and their Uncle was being foreclosed upon…so where did the money come from?

It, like so many other things in our propagandized info-sphere, remains a ‘mystery’…

Is the sad truth here as simple as ‘because they could?’

So, how will the housing market ‘recover’ if the pool of qualified buyers continues to shrink?

You don’t dare pay too much for a home because the odds of ever seeing the money again are diminishing rapidly…and who’s ‘the greater fool’ now?

Same applies to our outrageously over-valued ‘equities market’. What will happen to ‘social cohesion’ when everybody learns they’ve been played for ‘chumps’?

When you have traders pulling down billion dollar bonus checks, you can see how investment involves ‘risk’…

Where do you think your money went?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The not quite so 'silent majority'

Greetings good citizen,

I kept my ears open as I attended social gatherings this weekend, what do you suppose I encountered? A good deal of indifference mixed with a general feeling of fear that things are headed in the wrong direction, for a laundry list of reasons.

What I found particularly, er, ‘amusing’ is how conservatives seem perplexed by the extreme divisions in our society (just who do you think has been hammering on those ‘wedges’ all of these years?)

A house divided against itself cannot stand. The only reason this house hasn’t blown itself to bits is because people still don’t quite believe the worst of their fellow man…yet.

It’s a ‘critical mass’ thing. The pressure is building but these things take time.

As I have stated numerous times before, you wake the Giant at your own peril. We can only pray that those who have poked it the hardest suffer the full consequences of their foolishness.

Unfortunately, those of us preaching unity also risk the wrath of the Giant. Any who speak out make themselves a target.

The Giant doesn’t give a fuck; it kills indiscriminately.

Not that this will stop a ‘true believer’…death, however, does a rather effective job of crushing ‘dissent’.

Which is to point out that it is already too late for many of us to ‘shut up’…target selection has been underway for quite a while now on both sides of the political fence.

What I find particularly disturbing is the growing consensus that ‘the system’ is broken. Continued participation is increasing viewed as ‘futile’ yet there is no ‘public dialog’ about changing the system. (You don’t suppose the corporate takeover of the MSM has anything to do with this disturbing silence, do you?)

Beneath each of these expressions of ‘civic concern’ is the implicit question of just when ‘hostilities’ are going to break out. Some even openly speculate between whom the battle will be fought…

Since there is no discussion of what our options are, we only have ‘one option’, the way things are…you’re expected to take it and like it…even as the situation becomes increasingly more mercenary due to extreme mis-management.

You can’t keep yelling ‘every man for themselves’ and then act surprised when it actually happens! (Yet conservatives do precisely this with ‘frightening regularity’…always insisting they have been ‘mis-interpreted’.)

When, in fact, it is exactly the outcome they were seeking.

Which leads us where good citizen? The best thing about somebody expressing ‘conservative beliefs’ is it marks them as A.) Stupid and B.) Untrustworthy/unreliable; as someone who can’t be counted on for the smallest of things.

Consider for a moment your conservative ‘acquaintances’ and siblings for the validity of the above statement. Simply put, of all of the people you know, who do you trust the least?

What you need to take note of the ‘amazing coincidence’ between weasely behavior and conservatism.

Really ragging on that one in five minority today, ain’t I?

That being a fact just how does such an unpopular political movement remain viable? This, bizarrely, brings us full circle to the ‘untrustworthy’ aspect of this equation…

Remember; I’ll never tell you what to think, good citizen, my job is to give you something to think about!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Shocking!

Greetings good citizen,

Apparently yesterday’s remarks from Chairman Bernanke were, er, ‘disposable’ as this morning markets have recovered all of the ground they lost yesterday and then some!

Left to your over tasked imagination is the daunting job of determining which statement is true, is the economy going to be ‘rocky’ for the foreseeable future or is the (thus far invisible) recovery still on track? (As this morning’s markets seem to indicate.)

This morning’s NY Times has this article to help us ‘ferret out’ the truth…

Stocks were sharply higher in morning trading Thursday on Wall Street after another strong batch of earnings and some encouraging signs of growth in Europe.

Investors are largely writing off a jump in weekly jobless claims that might have been skewed by seasonal factors. Instead they are focused on earnings from a broad range of companies that demonstrate businesses are not seeing a slowdown in the recovery that economic data would otherwise indicate.

Apparently ‘logic’ won’t help us in our quest for truth, the MSM insists on reporting ‘manufactured fantasies’ and accounting tricks as proof the economy is in, er, ‘recovery’.

Sadly, logic tells us otherwise. Trillions of dollars worth of ‘value’ as well as billions of dollars worth of income have been destroyed. There has been ‘zero’ return of either jobs or value so what is this recovery they’re babbling about?

Are they psycho? They have to be to persist in pointing to something that nobody else can see while making, er, ‘unverifiable’ claims that ‘economic activity’ is improving by any measurable degree.

We have a simple term for what they are doing, we call it lying, which makes them liars.

No irony should be lost on the fact that most of you would agree with that assessment. Here we encounter one more example of ‘what are you going to do about it?’

And we already know the answer to that one too…nothing.

Not right now anyway. Later, once the same bastards are hunting you down like a feral dog, you’ll remember all of their lies and swear vengeance…if you survive.

Maybe not a good plan but it’s the only one you’ve got.

So once again we wonder who are these so-called ‘investors’ and why, oh why do they believe in fantasies and falsehoods?

Perhaps it is but another symptom of ‘Conservative disease. For more on that topic we have this from today’s Alternet.

Shocking: Ben Stein Says The ‘Unpleasant’ Unemployed ‘Do Not Know How To Do A Day’s Work’

Posted by zaidjilani on @ 5:50 am

This post originally appeared on Think Progress.

Today, the Senate extended unemployment benefits for millions of jobless Americans. Despite the terrible shape of the economy, conservatives resisted extending unemployment insurance for weeks for Americans who can’t find work, launching a filibuster to prevent a vote on the benefits. [Tax breaks for billionaires but nothing for you!]

Writing at the American Spectator yesterday, former Nixon speechwriter and TV personality Ben Stein downplayed the suffering unemployed Americans are experiencing by writing that the people who are unemployed right now are “generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities.” He claims the unemployed are Americans with “unpleasant personalities…who do not know how to do a day’s work“:

The people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities. I say “generally” because there are exceptions. But in general, as I survey the ranks of those who are unemployed, I see people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or who do not know how to do a day’s work. They are people who create either little utility or negative utility on the job. Again, there are powerful exceptions and I know some, but when employers are looking to lay off, they lay off the least productive or the most negative. To assure that a worker is not one of them, he should learn how to work and how to get along — not always easy. [Are you ‘howling’ yet good citizen. How do you suppose Mr. Stein came by his, er, ‘familiarity’ with working people? You don’t suppose he picked up this ‘insight’ by rubbing elbows with, gasp, employers? (Because numbnuts is ‘parroting’ the vapid claims of employers.) It is laughable indeed to think employers (not bound to union contracts) don’t cut payroll by first looking at what they are paying the employee. If you show up on time every day, you can be the biggest asshole on the planet and keep your job. In fact, if you’re a real pinhead, you’ll probably get promoted!]

Of course, saying that the 15 million Americans who are unemployed right now are “generally” people with “poor work habits” is as offensive as it is wrong. The current recession is a global phenomenon caused by the collective bad behavior of the world’s largest financial institutions. Before the recession, the unemployment rate hovered around six percent; it is ludicrous to say that millions of Americans suddenly got lazier and less able to work within the span of a few months. [So we can only wonder if Mr. Stein will appear in public without bodyguards for the foreseeable future? It’s hard to determine which was more irresponsible, expressing these opinions or allowing them to be published without first consulting an attorney?]

Unfortunately, Stein is a widely respected voice on the American right who regularly appears on cable news to offer his thoughts on politics and policy. Using the Critical Mention media search engine, ThinkProgress finds that the name “Ben Stein” was mentioned 64 times in major television media networks within the past thirty days alone.

No irony should be lost on the fact that Mr. Stein has achieved the same ‘fame’ Mr. Limbaugh is noted for and that is you can’t be slandered by a ‘known liar’.

No ‘reasonable person’ would take Mr. Stein’s opinion to heart…and that’s probably a good thing. If people reacted to this the way they might if it was said directly about them, I wouldn’t give Mr. Stein good odds for surviving the day, much less the week.

The insanity rages on and we are expected to keep on doing what we do like everything was just as normal as ever as it becomes increasingly obvious nothing could be further from the truth.

It is like watching someone burn to death while they vehemently deny they are on fire. You can see the flames, why can’t they?

Is the answer as simple as they ‘refuse to believe?’

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Headline News

Greetings good citizen,

Talk about your ‘slow news day’, sometimes dissecting the minutia just doesn’t cut it because that ground is already heavily trodden (and I do you no service if all I do is parrot the viewpoints of others.)

There’s more to this ‘blogging thing’ than just pasting links.

Perhaps the sour taste in my mouth and the inability to choose a single topic is born of that nagging suspicion that the information being presented for discussion isn’t genuine. I (often) find myself at odds with the writers of many of my posts. Are we both trying to pick fly shit out of pepper?

So for today’s ‘exercise in futility’ we will peruse the headlines on offer and try to extrapolate what they mean/say about us as a society/species to a, er, casual observer…

Naturally, the ‘source’ will heavily influence the outcome of this ‘experiment’. Thus would I select the nation’s ‘paper of record’, that old gray lady, The NY Times.

Naturally, we’ll start with today’s ‘top stories’

TOP STORIES

To read any of these stories in detail, simply follow the link…

Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms
By DAVID E. SANGER and PETER BAKER
The new American nuclear strategy will narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons, with the exception of “outliers like Iran and North Korea.”

U.S. Is Seeking a Fine of $16.4 Million Against Toyota
By MICHELINE MAYNARD
The penalty is the largest single federal fine against an automaker and accuses Toyota of failing to notify the government about defective pedals promptly.

Toll Mounts in West Virginia Coal Mine Explosion
By IAN URBINA
At least12 miners were killed and 14 were missing after an explosion ripped through a coal mine 30 miles south of Charleston.

Now, how to proceed? Should we comment on each bullet point? No, the casual observer isn’t going to actually read any of the stories, they don’t mean anything to (s)he/it…all we want is the ‘impression’ the observer would come away with…what would (s)he/it think of this strange land and what passes for information ‘valuable enough’ that the denizens of this orbiting dust speck would pay to know it?

These ‘top stories’ sort of queers our experiment from the start because we now have to determine if (s)he/it is stranded here or free to leave? If (s)he/it is stranded, then the top three stories are sure to cause (s)he/it considerable alarm, don’t you think?

At a quick glance, this is not a ‘safe’ place to be stranded…What else would (s)he/it glean from perusing a ‘for profit’ news publication?

WORLD

Researchers Trace Data Theft to China
By JOHN MARKOFF and DAVID BARBOZA
Security researchers have monitored a spying operation in which China-based intruders pilfered documents from the Indian Defense Ministry.

Priest Charged in U.S. Is Still Serving in India
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
A priest charged with abusing a girl in Minnesota has been allowed to continue working at a diocese in India.

Video Shows American Killing of Photographer
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Wikileaks.org released a video of a U.S. helicopter killing a Reuters photographer and driver in 2007 in Baghdad.

Okay, doesn’t look like the ‘world news’ offers (s)he/it much to alter their ‘first impression’. Moving on further still, we encounter this:

U.S.

Death Toll Hits 25 in West Virginia Coal Mine Explosion
By IAN URBINA
Rescuers searched for 4 other miners on Tuesday after an explosion ripped through a coal mine 30 miles south of Charleston.

In California, Louder Calls to Prepare for Quakes
By JESSE McKINLEY
Officials tried to use Sunday’s 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Mexico as a reminder to Californians.

SIDEBAR
Strict Deadlines, Disabled Veterans and Dismissed Cases
By ADAM LIPTAK
The Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims is dismissing about two cases a week under a strict deadline the Supreme Court has been asked to review.

If we assume our ‘casual observer’ is reading the paper locally, here we find our first reason to relax…none of the terrifying things in the paper are actually happening in New York!

Not that they couldn’t happen there…the fact that they’re happening at all is still disquieting!

A little calmer, (s)he/it presses on:

BUSINESS

Citigroup’s Chief Shrinks Company, Eyeing Growth
By ERIC DASH
Citigroup’s chief executive is shedding the bank’s complex businesses and shrinking its balance sheet.

Financial Crisis Inquiry Wrestles With Setbacks
By SEWELL CHAN and ERIC DASH
Delays, disagreements and lack of focus are disrupting an investigation by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

Facing Suit, Pipe Maker Extends Guarantee
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
JM Eagle, fighting to retain sales amid allegations that it knowingly sold defective pipe, said its guarantee will cover pipe that is already in the ground, as well as the pipe that the company will sell in the future.

Okay, as long as (s)he/it isn’t here to negotiate a trade deal, they probably don’t much care about this information…but with that said good citizen, how do these headlines strike you? You who can’t ‘get away’?

But wait, (s)he/it isn’t done! Not that they are going to learn much else from the…

SPORTS

Duke Slips Past Butler to Win Its 4th Title
By PETE THAMEL
The Blue Devils beat Butler, 61-59, to win the university’s first men’s basketball championship since 2001.

Case Will Test N.F.L. Teams’ Liability in Dementia
By ALAN SCHWARZ
A workers’ compensation claim on behalf of Ralph Wenzel, a lineman from 1966 to 1973, could be worth more than $1 million. Other players could file similar claims.

Silence Yields to Ovation for Woods at Practice
By BILL PENNINGTON
Hole by hole, Tiger Woods played better in his Masters practice round, and the fans’ applause grew.

Probably ‘meaningless’ to a disinterested observer, sports are very ‘culture centric’…one need not be from ‘another planet’ to be clueless/confused by sports mania.

Next up…well, let’s assume (s)he/it isn’t much interested in the culture/arts of our obviously insane society so we’ll skip that and have a quick look at what those in the media think is important…

EDITORIALS

We Call That Double-Dipping
Critics of health care reform have seized on corporate complaints about losing a tax break. But it seems to be a reasonable way to pay for covering some of the uninsured.

When a Lawyer Is Wrong
Legal immigrants like Jose Padilla, who has lived in the United States for 40 years, should not face deportation after getting false legal advice.

Showdown at Indian Point
The owner of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, Entergy Corporation, needs to begin obeying environmental laws.

EDITORIAL NOTEBOOK
The Ball in Flight
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
On a warm Sunday afternoon — on the tennis court, the baseball diamond and the soccer field — the ball is ubiquitous.

OP-ED

Relax, We’ll Be Fine
By DAVID BROOKS
News of America’s death is greatly exaggerated. In reality, the U.S. is on the verge of a demographic, economic and social revival.

Turning Our Backs on Heroes
By BOB HERBERT
Americans have no real sense of the sacrifices made by the young men and women who have fought the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Season of Renewal
By ROGER COHEN
It is the season of renewal and rebirth, when we step back enough to feel the thread that binds the unity of mankind and connects us to our forebears.

Allergy-Free New York
By THOMAS LEO OGREN
Every spring, New York City’s trees give off a lot of potent pollen. Arborists could give allergy sufferers a break by planting low-pollen street trees.

Okay, the bottom half of the paper isn’t meant to be ‘captivating’, it’s the ‘general interest’ section of the paper. That said, the editorials provide us with some insight into the minds of what might be described as ‘trendsetters’.

One might even consider the bottom half of the paper as being the newspaper the publisher’s would like to print if only the rest of our crazy, predatory civilization would cooperate!

This collection of tidbits is intended to ‘distract’ you, provide you with an ‘antidote’ to the poisonous environment of the ‘real world’.

If only our leaders would concentrate on problems they could solve! It won’t lead to a ‘wonderful world’ but it would at least provide the impression that they weren’t totally incompetent!

What other impressions do we come away with from this exercise…if we eliminate (s)he/it?

Yeah, good citizen, you knew all along that the only one who matters here is YOU! So if we parse our original question slightly, how does this collection of seemingly unrelated events strike you?

What’s that? We can’t do you! Then I guess that leaves you stuck with what I think…boy are you in trouble now!

If we start with the original three stories, the first one is a non-event (if you consider the Obama presidency an extension of the Bush presidency.)

The second is ‘eyewash’ too…what is $16 mill to Toyota?

Which brings us to our third story…honestly now…weren’t you ‘surprised’ to learn of miners being trapped in a ‘cave-in’…don’t they blast and bulldoze coal now? Which makes us wonder…are we supposed to condemn the mining industry’s abysmal safety record and the willful corporate negligence that once again places profits ahead of people? Or are we supposed to start clamoring for ‘safer’ strip mining operations?

Given their ‘druthers’ good citizen you would have remained ignorant of this incident…but (lucky for you) it sells newspapers!

As we move on to the ‘World’ section we encounter two stories set in India and one in Baghdad, we are assaulted by more disturbing ‘background noise’.

How big/inclusive/invasive is the global security apparatus? And the fact that the military is slaying civilians with impunity, Israeli style is more disturbing when viewed in the context of ‘the consent of the governed’. Which is not to downplay the significance of a sexual predator being ‘transferred’ to a third world country to escape prosecution/exploit new victims…a transfer aided and abetted by a global organization established to ‘comfort’ the afflicted and nourish the souls of the ‘faithful’…the ‘true believers’!

Your eyes may not be tired yet but my time is running out…you catch my ‘drift’ and sadly, that is all I can share with you…only you know what you think.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Memory Lane

Greetings good citizen,

Once again it is not particularly surprising to witness certain pundits starting to hedge their bets because the steady drumbeat of positive reports, even if they’re fabricated, makes them look, er, ‘foolish’.

I’ve been predicting bloodshed for more than two years now and the only thing I’ve proven so far is that I’m not psychic! That said, just because we haven’t witnessed ‘Helter Skelter’ yet doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination mean that it ain’t going to happen!

All of the ‘ingredients’ have only recently entered ‘the pot’ (with millions exhausting their unemployment benefits over the past couple of months…with no more ‘extensions’ in the pipe, it’s finally put up or shut up time.)

So, while Mr. Panzer throws in the towel, I’m ready to make another ‘prediction’, once again involving rioting on a national scale over…you guessed it…jobs (or the decided lack thereof.)

But I digress good citizen, tonight’s offering centers on the question of whether or not the powers that be are on the verge of delivering ‘financial salvation’ to a world that desperately needs it…

Mr. Panzer (to his credit) doesn’t think so.

Not Gone Away

It's hard being a bear these days. In fact, what I'm experiencing right now reminds me of the frustration and pain I felt back in 2007, when clueless Pollyannas were enchanting the masses (and the media) with talk of a never-ending Goldilocks economy and the wonderful job that policymakers were doing to keep things on an even keel. [Those were the days good citizen! That said, I have to side with Mr. Panzer and question what planet the pundits were reporting from, because it sure as hell wasn’t here!]

In the end, my belief that reckless borrowing, speculation, and risk-taking, myriad unsustainable imbalances, and mindless complacency would end badly helped me survive the onslaught of propaganda, lies, and delusion. [I sincerely wish that just once somebody had the courage to call this phenomenon what it really was, ‘mis-direction’ intended to distract the populous from the effects of our economy being sold out from under us!]

Of course, just because I was right before doesn't mean I will be this time around. In fact, after the nightmare of the past few years, I hope I am wrong. Unfortunately, I think the odds of a happy ending are remote. For one thing, many of the problems that caused the crisis to begin with have not gone away. [Bizarrely, the problems that got the most attention are precisely the ones that never should have been addressed, while the ‘root cause’ of the crisis has been totally ignored!]

In "A Strong First Quarter in Stocks, But Investors Shouldn't Ignore the Dark Clouds," the Washington Post discusses one of them.

While acknowledging the improvement in the economy and excesses rung out from the financial system, [bearish] analysts argue that at its core, the same old problems loom: Individual debt, corporate debt, government debt.

David Levy of the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center said that even though upturns in the post-World War II period have lasted for several years, that won't be the case this time.

"Unsustained debt -- that's really what's different this time," he said.

For example, he pointed to household debt that, while recently improved, exceeds income. According to Federal Reserve statistics, the financial sector, which includes companies and government-sponsored enterprises, still has outstanding debt that is 119 percent the size of the gross domestic product. In 1990, that ratio was 46 percent.

"What this means is the private sector cannot function the way it normally does," Levy said. "This is a tremendous difference from any other cycle we've had since the 1930s. The idea we're going to jump-start the economy, and then it'll kind of kick in and drive itself -- that doesn't work here. . . Next year is very much a question mark in my mind."

Hmmn, what do you suppose they mean by ‘unsustained debt’? If they were talking about ‘unsustainable debt’, we would know precisely what they are talking about.

Fortunately, the paragraph that follows gives us a hint that they indeed mean ‘unsustainable debt’ because they point to the fact that borrowing has exceeded earnings both in the public and private sectors over the past several years!

What most people SHOULD find alarming is this was happening at the same time the ‘Pollyanna’s’ were hailing ‘the great moderation’ as the new paradigm for the new millennium.

Why the (bought and paid for) corporate media failed to disclose that our economic output was mostly debt, nobody is saying. We can ask what our Congress was doing while the ginned up war provided cover for the looting of the nation’s treasury or is that…er, another ‘mystery’?

Stop for a second good citizen and look back over the past twenty years, tell me what you see?

Does it feel like you’ve been ‘trapped’ on the ‘crazy train’? Honestly good citizen, the decision making process couldn’t have been more disastrous if they were not in fact trying to fuck things up!

And they succeeded, oh yes they did!

Case in point good citizen, over the past twenty years have you alternately cursed your employer while thanking your lucky stars that you’ve held on to you job?

Most of us have been constantly ‘reminded’ how ‘fortunate’ we are to be employed by the very same people who cut our paychecks. Isn’t that a fact good citizen?

Most of us have (and still do) fear for our job, especially if you’re over 40. Look around you good citizen, there are EXTREMELY few people who are over fifty and still at their original employer (or still working for their first handful of employers…meaning their ‘employer count’ is less than five.)

Churn has become so prevalent in the workforce that over 70% of us have next to zero saved for retirement…which, by no small coincidence, is no longer your employer’s problem, it’s yours!

Now financial planners are saying you will be in trouble if you have less than TWO MILLION dollars set aside for the what, ten to fifteen years you have remaining after you retire?

Wonder what its going to be like for those of us who are…roughly $2 million dollars short of that $2 million? [Do you know what you have to be earning in order to be able to lay that much money aside? It’s a hell of a lot more than the average ‘paycheck peasant’ makes!]

I’m going to guess the ‘army’ of Granny and Grampy is going to be pretty damn big, do you think they will dare mess with us?

Why do you suppose conservative pundits are telling their ‘flocks’ to stockpile food?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

What were they thinking?

Greetings good citizen,

History doesn’t necessarily ‘repeat’ but it sure as shit ‘echoes’. Which is to point out that tonight’s offering echoes last night’s post in a rather creepy fashion as the GOP invokes ‘the center’ (that they’ve laid claim to) as the basis for what is ultimately ‘minority rule’.

Sure they’ve bankrupted most of the nation, which only proves they are ‘unfit’ to rule! Why would the citizens of the US want to pay attention to losers that have been played for chumps at every turn because the ‘smart money’ has stacked both the legislative and the media decks?

Judges, like journalists, work for paychecks…if they want to continue to receive those paychecks, they do as their told. If they don’t agree with what they’re told, too bad! If they don’t do what they’re told to do the overlords will simply find someone who will, and believe me what I tell ya, there’s no shortage of sellouts out there!

Um, before we dive in I want to note that I’ve taken a little ‘liberty’ with tonight’s offering. I copied and pasted a quote from the bottom of the article and moved it to the top. This sort of ‘negates’ the intended feeble play for irony, turning it back into the outrage it should be.

In a Message to Democrats, Wall St. Sends Cash to G.O.P. [Like this is somehow ‘new’ or ‘news’?]

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he visited New York about twice a month to try to tap into Wall Street’s “buyers’ remorse.”

“I just don’t know how long you can expect people to contribute money to a political party whose main plank of their platform is to punish you,” Mr. Cornyn said. [How many of you are simply agog at this blatant declaration of the willingness of the GOP to prostrate themselves before the golden thrones of Wall Street just to obtain campaign financing?

This is supposed to be a ‘selling point’? If you want Wall Street to donate to your campaign you have to suck their balls? Understand good citizen the ‘monied interests’ on Wall Street are directly responsible for the ‘disassembly’ and subsequent destruction of our economy! Do you really want to elect politicians who are willing to sell you (and your future livelihood) out for a campaign contribution?

So what do you think good citizen, how ‘good’ do you feel about the Republican pukes now?]

[Beginning of original article]
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: February 7, 2010

WASHINGTON — If the Democratic Party has a stronghold on Wall Street, it is its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is a friend of President Obama’s from Chicago, a frequent White House guest and a big Democratic donor. Its vice chairman, William M. Daley, a former Clinton administration cabinet official and Obama transition adviser, comes from Chicago’s Democratic dynasty. [Think the media did the administration a ‘favor’ by pointing out Jamie Dimon’s close connection to the President? I’m sure if you checked the visitor’s log you’d find Mr. Dimon was no stranger to the Bush White House…]

But this year Chase’s political action committee is sending the Democrats a pointed message. While it has contributed to some individual Democrats and state organizations, it has rebuffed solicitations from the national Democratic House and Senate campaign committees. Instead, it gave $30,000 to their Republican counterparts. [The Republicans have remained steadfast in their ‘opposition’ of any banking reform. The Massachusetts Senate race only proves that elections, even ‘special elections, continue to be ‘stolen’.]

The shift reflects the hard political edge to the industry’s campaign to thwart Mr. Obama’s proposals for tighter financial regulations. [Shift? What shift? After Bush screwed the pooch the bankers KNEW they had to put a Democrat in the White house…and they even succeeded in putting their two favored candidates on the short list. So what’s this ‘shift’ shit all about? Are they trying to assert that they’ve always donated to the Democrats more than to the Republicans? WTF!]

Just two years after Mr. Obama helped his party pull in record Wall Street contributions — $89 million from the securities and investment business, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics — some of his biggest supporters, like Mr. Dimon, have become the industry’s chief lobbyists against his regulatory agenda. [Excuse me? This says more about who ‘Uncle Tom’ belongs to and the longstanding lack of a substantive difference between our two political parties than his ‘savvy’ at fundraising’.]

Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street’s “buyer’s remorse” with the Democrats. And industry executives and lobbyists are warning Democrats that if Mr. Obama keeps attacking Wall Street “fat cats,” they may fight back by withholding their cash. [How sad is it good citizen when an argument such as this runs in the nation’s ‘paper of record?’]

“If the president doesn’t become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose that support,” said Kelly S. King, the chairman and chief executive of BB&T. Mr. King is a board member of the Financial Services Roundtable, which lobbies for the biggest banks, and last month he helped represent the industry at a private dinner at the Treasury Department. [Perhaps more perplexing is how ‘flunkies’ for the rich and shameless rate being quoted in this ‘shamelessly liberal’ newspaper? Which is to ask, ‘how liberal is it?’…The answer, good citizen is ‘not at all!’]

“I understand the public outcry,” he continued. “We have a 17 percent real unemployment rate, people are hurting, they want to see punishment. But the political rhetoric just incites more animosity and gets people riled up.” [Does this mean Mr. King doesn’t agree with the idea of burning Wall Street to the ground? Funny, the rest of the nation thinks it’s a great idea! Which only proves how ‘out of step’ the Republican’s are.]

A spokesman for JPMorgan Chase declined to comment on its political action committee’s contributions or relations with the Democrats. But many Wall Street lobbyists and executives said they, too, were rethinking their giving. [Hmmn, odd, there’s that ‘unwillingness to go on the record’ again. Doesn’t it usually indicate somebody is lying through their teeth?]

“The expectation in Washington is that ‘We can kick you around, and you are still going to give us money,’ ” said a top official at a major Wall Street firm, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of alienating the White House. “We are not going to play that game anymore.” [Wait a minute Slim! Without taxpayer funding those Wall Street banks (technically are) would be broke/bankrupt…so WHOSE money are the bankers laying out for their (longstanding) political allies?]

Wall Street fund-raisers for the Democrats say they are feeling under attack from all sides. The president is lashing out at their “arrogance and greed.” Republican friends are saying “I told you so.” And contributors are wishing they had their money back. [Um, WHOSE money back? I’m sure John and Jane Q. Taxpayer wish the banks weren’t using THEIR money to scuttle banking reform…if you want to be honest about who is doing what here!]

“I am a big fan of the president,” said Thomas R. Nides, a prominent Democrat who is also a Morgan Stanley executive and chairman of a major Wall Street trade group, the Securities and Financial Markets Association.[Who?] “But even if you are a big fan, when you are the piñata at the party, it doesn’t really feel good.” [Talk about ‘disconnect’…are the Democrats supposed to defend these criminals like the G.O.P. does?]

Roger C. Altman, a former Clinton administration Treasury official who founded the Wall Street boutique Evercore Partners, called the Wall Street backlash against Mr. Obama “a constant topic of conversation.” Many bankers, he said, failed to appreciate the “white hot anger” at Wall Street for the financial crisis. (Mr. Altman said he personally supported “the substance” of the president’s recent proposals, though he questioned their feasibility and declined to comment at all on what he called “the rhetoric.”) [Do you suppose Mr. Altman just acknowledged what everyone fears, that Wall Street is simply pulling Obama’s strings?]

Mr. Obama’s fight with Wall Street began last year with his proposals for greater oversight of compensation and a consumer financial protection commission. It escalated with verbal attacks this year on what he called Wall Street’s “obscene bonuses.” And it reached a new level in his calls for policies Wall Street finds even more infuriating: a “financial crisis responsibility” tax aimed only at the biggest banks, and a restriction on “proprietary trading” that banks do with their own money for their own profit. [Which naturally assumes banks HAVE ‘their own money’ apart from what the government ‘gave’ them. Then there is the issue of whether or not banks ‘earn’ money rather than simply ‘creating’ it.]

“If the president wanted to turn every Democrat on Wall Street into a Republican,” one industry lobbyist said, “he is doing everything right.” [Now, think about that statement and tell me why he SHOULDN’T do exactly that? What’s to be gained from a ‘working relationship’ with criminals?]

Though Wall Street has long been a major source of Democratic campaign money (alongside Hollywood and Silicon Valley), Mr. Obama built unusually direct ties to his contributors there. He is the first president since Richard M. Nixon whose campaign relied solely on private donations, not public financing. [Oh ho! Now Mr. Kirkpatrick is trying to tar the Democrats with the same brush so often used to tar the Republicans. Wall Street curry’s favor with whatever party whose star is rising…and it’s a huge mistake to think the Republican’s will return from exile in a single four year term!]

Wall Street lobbyists say the financial industry’s big Democratic donors help ensure that their arguments reach the ears of the president and Congress. White House visitors’ logs show dozens of meetings with big Wall Street fund-raisers, including Gary D. Cohn, a president of Goldman Sachs; Mr. Dimon of JPMorgan Chase; and Robert Wolf, the chief of the American division of the Swiss bank UBS, who has also played golf, had lunch and watched July 4 fireworks with the president. [Jesus, must have been a real heavy-duty contributor to be granted that much ‘access’ to the first family! Makes you wonder if he’s on the list of people who baby-sit the Obama children when the first couple goes out for the evening?]

Lobbyists say they routinely brief top executives on policy talking points before they meet with the president or others in the administration. Mr. Wolf, in particular, also serves on the Presidential Economic Recovery Advisory Board led by the former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker.

Mr. Wolf was the only Wall Street executive on the panel and became the board’s leading opponent of what became known as the Volcker rule against so-called proprietary trading, according to participants. Such trading did nothing to cause the crisis, Mr. Wolf argued, as the industry lobbyists do now. (The panel concluded that the crisis established a precedent for government rescue that could enable big banks to speculate for their own gain while taxpayers took the biggest risks.) [Um. Left unsaid here is whether Mr. Wolf’s position on the advisory board was granted by virtue of his expertise or whether he ‘bought’ the spot…as Mr. Kirkpatrick is taking pains to imply…]

Mr. Wolf and Mr. Dimon, who was in Washington last week for meetings on Capitol Hill and lunch with the president, have both pressed the industry’s arguments against other proposed regulations and the bank tax as well — saying the rules could cramp needed lending and send business abroad, according to lobbyists. [Um, the banks aren’t lending period; so threatening not to do what they aren’t doing anyway rings mighty hollow…]

Both men are said to remain personally supportive of the president. But UBS’s political action committee has shifted its contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. [Um, isn’t that the Republican watchdog group?] After dividing its money evenly between the parties for 2008, it has given about 56 percent to Republicans this cycle. [What lesson do you suppose the average reader will draw from that information? You don’t suppose they’d conclude that Republicans votes are ‘for sale’, would they?]

Most of its biggest contributions, of $10,000 each, went to five Republican opponents of Mr. Obama’s regulatory proposals, including Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking minority member of the Banking Committee. [What does that say about the ‘honorable’ Mr. Shelby?]

The Democratic campaign committees declined to comment on Wall Street money. But their Republican rivals are actively courting it. [Now let’s watch the media deny any knowledge of the Republicans being in the pay of Wall Street! And so we arrive at the statement I moved to the head of the article.]

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he visited New York about twice a month to try to tap into Wall Street’s “buyers’ remorse.”

“I just don’t know how long you can expect people to contribute money to a political party whose main plank of their platform is to punish you,” Mr. Cornyn said.

Damn good citizen, you can only sit there in amazement wondering what part of ‘they don’t get this’ the media doesn’t understand.

The public is ready to start burning banks to the ground and Conservative ‘nitwits’ are crowing over being ‘favored’ by Wall Street bankers!

I guess it’s true, ‘stupid is as stupid does!’

But wait for it good citizen, we may see a piece in Alternet or some other web site but it is certain that no other MSM outlet will seize on this…dare I say it? Bonanza!

And you know that is just plain wrong!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner